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WorldNetDaily columnist Erik Rush isrepeatinghiscall for top government officials to be punished with prison and hanging for treason, writing today that President Obama “has become the chief facilitator of Islamist terror on a global scale” and “had a hand in orchestrating the Benghazi attack.”

Upset that not enough people believe that “the individual representing himself as Barack Hussein Obama” is on a mission to “destroy America,” Rush writes that both Democrats and Republicans are running “interference for both the degenerate white-robed sultans and sheiks in the Sunni Muslim world, the black-dress-wearing Shiite mullahs in Iran, as well as the smug, insubstantial usurper in the White House.”

“Hanging offenses have been committed by people in high places,” Rush adds.

It’s not that President Obama can’t utter the phrase “Islamist terror,” it is that he won’t do so, because at this juncture, Obama has become the chief facilitator of Islamist terror on a global scale.

For the record, I have been personally assured by intelligence operatives from the U.S. and Britain, both past and present, that they and other foreign intelligence organizations are “well aware” of who the individual representing himself as Barack Hussein Obama actually is, the parties who orchestrated his rise to power and that his mission is nothing less than to “bring America down.”

As all indicators reveal, this is precisely what he has been doing, despite the wholesale misrepresentations of the administration and the American press. Intelligence groups from outside the U.S. have approached American media representatives with information concerning Obama’s origins and designs; whether their reticence to engage is due to fear, having been compromised, or ideological affinity is anyone’s guess, but they won’t touch it.

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Rep. Trey Gowdy charged two weeks ago that the Obama administration is purposely slowing a congressional inquiry into the deadly 2012 terror attacks in Benghazi, Libya. It has also been reported that Gowdy is enduring White House intimidation over his pursuit of the investigation. Evidence suggests it is altogether likely that the White House had a hand in orchestrating the Benghazi attack, rather than merely failing to provide adequate military support in time to prevent casualties.

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Among the most prominent – and probably most compromised of the aforementioned GOP power players – would be the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee in Intelligence at the time, former Rep. Mike Rogers. In 2011, Rogers’ wife, Kristi Rogers, was on the board of directors of a company that was ultimately responsible for outsourcing security at the Benghazi Special Mission Compound. Mike Rogers subsequently and inexplicably stonewalled and obfuscated during House hearings on Benghazi, to the consternation of Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike.

It is said that America’s “ruling class” (as detailed in “the writings of Angelo M. Codevilla) always close ranks to protect their own. It has become tragically apparent that in order to protect their filthy little political fiefdoms, these parties have determined that they must run interference for both the degenerate white-robed sultans and sheiks in the Sunni Muslim world, the black-dress-wearing Shiite mullahs in Iran, as well as the smug, insubstantial usurper in the White House. The common denominator among these is only that little trifle of their intention to destroy America.

This has gone far beyond dishonesty, disloyalty, or even self-aggrandizing corruption. Hanging offenses have been committed by people in high places; the list of such offenses increases daily, as does the number of those who add themselves to the list of the culpable, or dig themselves in deeper with each diversion they craft and lie they utter.

In an interview with the Iowa Republican yesterday, Bob Vander Plaats of the Religious Right group The Family Leader said that all of his dire warnings about the consequences of marriage equality are “starting to come true.”

“A lot of the things that we said early on that people said were red herrings, that we’re just trying to scare people, they’re starting to come true,” he said. “A woman wants to marry herself, a dad wants to marry a daughter, three people out on the East Coast want to get married, polygamy laws are getting labeled as unconstitutional. So it’s not about redefining marriage, it’s about un-defining marriage.”

The Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) is facing a lawsuit from its founder’s granddaughter, who claimed in a court filing last week that she and her husband were threatened for trying to expose a major financial scandal at the televangelist network.

She also claims that TBN intimidated whistleblowers, including herself. The suit describes one incident in which Matthew Crouch, a TBN host and vice president, allegedly “began tapping the firearm he had brought to [a] meeting and asked Plaintiff Brittany Koper what she thought would happen when she wrote a memo to the board critical of Defendant Matthew Crouch’s financial improprieties. Defendant Matthew Crouch continued tapping the gun he was holding to ensure that Plaintiff Brittany Koper recognized the lethal threat being made.”

Defendant Trinity Broadcasting purports to be the world’s largest Christian broadcasting network. Defendant Christian Broadcasting is a nonprofit corporation that was formed by Defendant John Casoria and Paul F. Crouch, Sr. as a tax shelter for Paul F. Crouch, Sr.’s “personal money.”

Defendant John Casoria is Defendant Trinity Broadcasting’s Assistant Secretary and General Counsel. He is also Defendant Janice Crouch’s nephew and is thereby Plaintiff Brittany Koper’s first cousin once removed. Plaintiffs are informed, believe, and based thereon allege that Defendant John Casoria is the director and seniormanager of Redemption Strategies, and that this company was formed for the sole purpose of maliciously prosecuting, harassing, and intimidating Plaintiff Michael Koper and Plaintiff Brittany Koper (as well as members of Plaintiff Michael Koper’s family) in retaliation after the Kopers reported illegal conduct within Defendant Trinity Broadcasting, including unlawful distributions to Defendant Trinity Broadcasting’s members and directors on the order of $100 million.

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Plaintiff Brittany Koper learned through specific instructions from Defendant Trinity Broadcasting, Defendant Jan Crouch, Defendant Matthew Crouch, and Defendant John Casoria that the requirements of Plaintiff Brittany Koper’s new job included active participation in numerous illegal schemes that were disclosed to Plaintiff Brittany Koper following her promotion.

The nature of these illegal activities involved the systematic diversion ofDefendant Trinity Broadcasting’s charitable assets through unlawful distributions to Defendant Trinity Broadcasting’s directors through numerous channels. The magnitude of these unlawful and related financial schemes uncovered by or disclosed to Plaintiff Brittany Koper is on the order of $100 million.

Plaintiff Brittany Koper and Plaintiff Michael Koper were terminated by Defendant Trinity Broadcasting because they refused to participate in the unlawful activities demanded by Defendant Trinity Broadcasting’s directors and senior executive Defendant John Casoria, and for making reports of those unlawful activities.

Plaintiff Michael Koper and Plaintiff Brittany Koper were specifically threatened and intimidated by Defendant Trinity Broadcasting’s directors and senior executive Defendant John Casoria when Plaintiff Michael Koper and Plaintiff Brittany Koper stated that these issues needed to be resolved and properly reported to state and federal officials. Plaintiff Michael Koper and Plaintiff Brittany Koper were told by Defendant Janice Crouch, Defendant Matthew Crouch, and Defendant John Casoria that they would have Plaintiff Michael Koper and Plaintiff Brittany Koper “arrested” and “prosecuted” if they tried to report Defendant Trinity Broadcasting or its directors for financial improprieties. Plaintiff Michael Koper and Plaintiff Brittany Koper were advised by Defendant John Casoria that they, too, had broken the same laws and that they were “prohibited” as “accomplices” from reporting alleged crimes outside the company. Plaintiff Michael Koper and Plaintiff Brittany Koper were told that they were required to go through Defendant Trinity Broadcasting’s attorneys, only, if they had concerns. And,

Plaintiff Michael Koper and Plaintiff Brittany Koper were told that Defendant Trinity Broadcasting would have them arrested for “theft” if they took any documents to prosecutors. Defendant John Casoria also told the Plaintiff Michael Koper and Plaintiff Brittany Koper that they were bound by confidentiality agreements that prohibited them from reporting any illegal activities, and they were threatened with civil lawsuits.

On or about September 1, 2011, Paul Crouch, Sr. suffered congestive heart failure and was hospitalized. Defendant Janice Crouch and Defendant Matthew Crouch kept Paul Crouch, Sr. isolated from the rest of his family during this time and, in particular, Paul Crouch, Jr., Plaintiff Brittany Koper, and Plaintiff Michael Koper. It was during this isolation that Defendant Trinity Broadcasting’s board of directors announced that Plaintiff Michael Koper, Plaintiff Brittany Koper, and her father Paul Crouch, Jr. were all fired. When questioned about the termination, Defendant Matthew Crouch began tapping the firearm he had brought to the meeting and asked Plaintiff Brittany Koper what she thought would happen when she wrote a memo to the board critical of Defendant Matthew Crouch’s financial improprieties. Defendant Matthew Crouch continued tapping the gun he was holding to ensure that Plaintiff Brittany Koper recognized the lethal threat being made.

On January 29, 2014 Plaintiff Michael Koper and Plaintiff Brittany Koper discovered, for the first time, that multiple confidential communications they had with Paul Crouch, Sr., Defendant Matthew Crouch, and/or Defendant John Casoria were recorded by Defendants using an electronic recording device, and that these recordings had subsequently been edited and manipulated by Defendants. Defendants then disclosed and intentionally used these intercepted communications on multiple occasions.

On “Washington Watch” yesterday, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins called on conservative Christians to engage in “civil disobedience” to fight gay rights laws, which he said will force them into “involuntary servitude.”

Discussing the case of an Oregon baking company that a court recently found violated a state nondiscrimination law by refusing service to a lesbian couple, Perkins said that conservatives should challenge such nondiscrimination laws by using “the courts to push back and just overload the state.”

“I think we’re getting close to the point if they move to continue to force Christians to engage in behavior that violates their moral conscience and convictions — it’s almost like involuntary servitude,” Perkins said. “Maybe we’re coming to the point of civil disobedience, of saying, ‘no, we won’t go.’ They’re going to push and there will come a point [where] there will be pushback.”

In an interview on Armed America Radio in December, in which he also warned that the Obama administration is using things like Ebola and immigration to spark a “race war” and tighten federal control, Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes warned that Connecticut’s enforcement of a gun law it passed in 2013 will turn gun owners against the police and start a civil war.

Rhodes, however, is pretty sure this door-to-door confiscation is going to happen and that when it does, gun owners are going to start giving police their weapons “bullets-first.”

“I think it will be a civil war, frankly,” he said. “I think it’ll depend upon whose door they go to first, but I think eventually they’re going to run into a veteran, or just a hard-core gun owner, a Three Percenter, who’s going to say, ‘I’m not going to give them to you, you’re going to get them bullets-first.’ And that’s how it’s going to go.”

“There’s going to be gun owners who are going to fight back,” he said. “And once that starts, there are other gun owners who are not going to sit and wait for them to come to their door, they’re going to go active right now.”

He added that police officers should refuse to enforce the law out of fear for their lives: “You have a duty to defend the Constitution and keep your oath. And it’s more important that you do that than your pension, it’s more important than your job, because you’re not going to have either one if it turns into a civil war and we open the gates of hell. And that’s just the bottom line.”

“President Obama, finish the sentence — ISIS is…an organization? Really?! If you’re going to use that word, include strong context that captures their evil and barbarity. You’re the leader of the free world; words matter,” Parke wrote.

Of course, the video that Fox Nation posted immediately above the column in which Parke castigates Obama for failing to refer to the terrorist group’s “barbarity” shows Obama condemning ISIS yesterday for its … “barbarity.”

While Obama pledged to defeat ISIS in the wake of its brutal execution of a Jordanian pilot and used the exact word Parke was angry that he didn’t use, this apparently wasn’t enough for ox Nation’s fearless watchdog.

Stewart Rhodes, whose anti-government Oath Keepers group deploys unofficial militias to places like the Bundy ranch and Ferguson, Missouri , claimed in an interview on Armed America Radio in December that Obama administration officials are using the Ebola virus, immigration, and the riots in Ferguson to “spark a race war” that will ultimately allow them to destroy the Constitution.

Discussing Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon’s decision not to send the National Guard to Ferguson to quell the violent elements of protests after a grand jury decision in the case of Michael Brown’s death, Armed America Radio host Mark Walters told Rhodes, “There is speculation that there were powers at the highest levels of our government that asked him not to do that for the optics.”

“Well, absolutely,” Rhodes agreed. “They knew there were outside communist agitators there for months training people on how to do this stuff and, as you said, they knew precisely what was going to happen that night.”

“You have to wonder why,” he added, “I think you’re on the same track I’m at, where I believe this was intentional to maximize the pain, maximize the chaos, and then be able to say, ‘Hey, here’s the solution, we’ve got to cut down on the First Amendment, we need more monitoring of groups, we need a police-state mindset.’”

Later in the program, Rhodes called Obama an “agent of destruction,” and said that since the Republican Congress is unlikely to impeach the president in the next two years, Americans will have to “step up and take care of business” themselves by forming militia units at the southern border and in cities.

“I see the American people being left with the only real option they ever had, which is to get up and do it themselves, which is to go and go to the border, go and stop the looting and the rioting, take the responsibility that’s always been in their hands to serve as the militia of the people and to step up and take care of business,” he said. “That is going to be the only answer.”

“What we are in is a fourth-generation-warfare assault on the Constitution,” he warned. “They’re using everything they possibly can, whether it’s Ebola or immigration or riots, and trying to spark a race war, trying to divide and conquer the American people. I think you can see an economic attack too coming right up.”

Sandy Rios, the American Family Association’s governmental affairs director, is upset with media coverage blaming the current measles outbreak on parents who refuse to vaccinate their children and thinks that the media should instead be baselessly blaming immigrants.

On her radio program today, Rios claimed that it is a “fact” that unvaccinated immigrants are to blame for the outbreaks of measles and Enterovirus D68.

“We cannot lay this outbreak of measles at the feet of parents who have refused to vaccinate their kids,” she said. “It’s their kids who are getting sick, by the way, and that’s plenty punishment. But I would say, and I submit to you that the vast majority of the problem that we’re having is because we have opened our borders to great danger.”

Rios said yesterday that while she personally believes in vaccination, she thinks that parents who don’t are receiving too much criticism, noting Sen. Rand Paul’s recent statement that vaccines have been linked to “profound mental disorders.”

“The thing that I’m resisting is this groundswell of vitriol against parents who have for now a long time decided not to vaccinate their children because of their concerns,” she said, insisting that such vitriol should instead be directed against immigrants.

“The thing that bothers me even more that I have heard no one say, no one, no one, no one, at least not in this current discussion, talk about the effect of thousands of illegal immigrant children coming across the border last summer who certainly haven’t been vaccinated, who certainly have carried into our country diseases we have not seen in sometimes a century or two,” she said.

Fox News was widely mocked and criticized last month for reporting that neighborhoods in Paris and other European cities have supposedly fallen to Sharia law, and the network ultimately retracted and apologized for its repeated allegations about these so-called “no-go zones.”

The Christian Broadcasting Network, however, is apparently standing by the very same discredited claims. Pat Robertson told viewers of “The 700 Club” today that “there are certain areas in Paris where the police can’t even go, they belong only to these radical Muslims and the police and the French can’t [enter].”

“They have Sharia law, they run their own show and the French government has no control over them,” Robertson said. “The so-called ‘banlieues.’”

He cited these non-existent no-go zones as evidence that Islam as a “cancer that is going to grow and grow and grow if it’s not excised.”

Despite Robertson’s claim, ‘banlieues’ are simply suburbs, and while some are designated to receive more government attention to fight crime and poverty, Sharia law no-go zones donotexist.

Yesterday, Utah’s Republican-led House Revenue and Taxation Committee approved a measure to rewrite the oaths taken by state officials by “amending the language to put the Utah Constitution ahead of the U.S. Constitution in the oath.”

The Salt Lake Tribune reports that state Rep. Brian Greene led the fight to “change the oath of office and require elected officials to swear to defend Utah's Constitution first, ahead of the U.S. Constitution.” Greene insisted that he wanted the oath to reflect “our duty as state legislators to first and foremost uphold the Constitution and make sure the federal Constitution does not run roughshod over the state Constitution.”

Pat Robertson is still reeling from President Obama’s re-election, and today on “The 700 Club” criticized voters for backing the president’s campaign for a second term, which he said might lead to the destruction of America.

Robertson and Christian Broadcasting Network reporter Erick Stakelbeck also alleged that Obama refuses to use force against ISIS militants in Syria. “He will not lift a finger about Syria,” Robertson said.

Earlier this week, the National Review posted an audio recording of a call that a constituent of Rep. Renee Ellmers made to the North Carolina Republican’s office about her role in delaying a vote on a national 20-week abortion ban, which reveals, among other things, that prominent anti-choice women’s groups pushed for a requirement that rape survivors file police reports before being allowed an exemption from the ban.

Ellmers and other Republican women and moderates had objected to a provision that exempted rape survivors only if they first reported the assault to the police, warning that it could become a political liability for Republicans. In response, the GOP leadership withdrew the bill on the eve of a planned vote to work out what Sen. Lindsey Graham later called “this definitional problem with rape.”

In the call posted by National Review, an Ellmers staffer explains in frank detail the political machinations behind the wording of the rape exception and the ultimate withdrawal of the bill.

As we have noted, an earlier version of the bill sponsored by Rep. Trent Franks and approved by the House Judiciary Committee in 2013 included no rape exception at all. But after what the Ellmers staff called a “huge communications error” from Franks, when he suggested that rape rarely results in pregnancy, Republican leaders quietly snuck in a rape exception to the bill before putting it up for a vote on the House floor.

The Ellmers staffer revealed that prominent anti-choice women’s groups, including the Susan B. Anthony List and Concerned Women for America, objected to the rape exception and were instrumental in getting GOP leaders to modify it to include the reporting requirement.

These groups, the staffer said, told Republicans, “well, if you’re going to make an exception for rape and incest, it’s going to have to be reported to law enforcement officials.”

The staffer told the constituent that the rape exception was bad policy because it puts the federal government in the position of “identifying what is an is not rape”… and creates a “loophole” by which she alleged women would lie to law enforcement about being raped in order to access legal abortion.

“The science is 100 percent clear-cut that vaccinations have nothing to do with autism,” Stein said, adding that he was “very, very disappointed” with Paul for perpetuating the “hoax.”

In response, Malzberg insisted that Paul was only talking about the “reaction that he has seen” to vaccinations from some parents, for instance Malzberg’s own reluctance to get his teenage son an HPV vaccine in order to protect “some female” from cervical cancer in the future.

“I’m not going to vaccinate my kid so that some female won’t get cervical cancer maybe when she’s 60 years old,” he said.

“Now, there you’re totally right and if that’s what Sen. Paul meant,” Stein responded. “If he meant that certain vaccines have reactions, he’s absolutely right about that and I congratulate him for saying that.”

In an appearance on “The Steve Malzberg Show” today, Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., continuedhiscrusade against President Obama’s executive actions on immigration reform, calling on the federal courts to find that the president’s actions violated the law.

If Obama defies such a ruling, Brooks said, then Congress should pass a contempt citation against the president for his “reckless conduct” and demand that he comply with the court’s decision.

He said that Obama would then drop his executive actions since he, like Richard Nixon, doesn’t want to “incur the wrath that comes with a contempt citation with potential fines and jail time.”

“Ultimately that’s the kind of power a federal court has to force the president of the United States to obey our immigration laws,” he added.

The congressman once told Slate that Obama should face five years in prison for encouraging illegal immigration:

Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks, one of the lower chamber’s most energetic critics of comprehensive immigration reform, suggested that the president’s move could potentially be grounds for impeachment, or even prison time.

Brooks said there is a federal statute (“I don’t have the citation for it at the tip of my tongue”) making it a felony to aid, abet, or entice a foreigner to illegally enter the U.S.

“At some point, you have to evaluate whether the president’s conduct aids or abets, encourages, or entices foreigners to unlawfully cross into the United States of America,” he continued. “That has a five-year in-jail penalty associated with it.”

In an interview with Newsmax’s Steve Malzberg today, conservative talk show host Michael Savage lit into President Obama for declining to meet with Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to Washington weeks before the Israeli parliamentary election.

“If this country should survive this monster, there will be a psychological analysis of this president, who is a pathological liar,” Savage said. He then accused Obama of “sending Jeremy Bird,” a Democratic strategist, to launch an anti-Netanyahu campaign and of “manipulating an election in a foreign nation.”

Of course, Savage’s claim that Obama sent Bird to work for a group critical of Netanyahu is bogus, but that didn't stop Savage from suggesting that Israeli officials arrest Bird anyway, urging them to “immediately arrest Jeremy Bird and the 273 progressive liberal Jew-haters over there” as “foreign spies.” He added that Israel should then put them in a prison with their Palestinian “blood brothers”

American Family Association President Tim Wildmon said on his radio program today that while he doesn’t “know” whether President Obama is secretly Muslim, the president “does sympathize with Muslims and the Islamic religion,” perhaps “because he grew up in it over there in Indonesia or somewhere.”

After interviewing Newt Gingrich about his recent claim that “the United States is losing the war with radical Islamists,” Wildmon pointed to a poll showing that 17 percent of voters, and 34 percent of conservative Republican voters, falsely believe that the President is a Muslim.

“I don’t know if he is or not, I don’t think he gets on his prayer rug five times a day but surely it’s obvious that he does sympathize with Muslims and the Islamic religion,” Wildmon said. “Maybe that’s because he grew up in it over there in Indonesia or somewhere”

If Wildmon wonders why some people wrongly think that Obama is a Muslim, he can look no further than his own talk radio network.

Today on “The 700 Club,” televangelist Pat Robertson waxed nostalgic about the days when kids who had the measles and mumps simply lived through the experience and “just got immune” rather than receiving a vaccination. Not only did Robertson come out against vaccination mandates, but he also suggested that water fluoridation could lead to detrimental health effects.

“I’m sure that there’s some serious consequences to measles and perhaps vaccinations is the answer, but I don’t think any parent should be forced by the government to vaccinate,” he said. “There was a vaccination against polio and I know the mother of a friend contracted polio from the vaccine, so all vaccines are not benign. But, so far, this one about whooping cough and diphtheria and measles has been very effective and I think it was a good thing to do, but the problem is, natural immunity is a pretty good thing and if you have some of these diseases when you’re a kid you have immunity the rest of your life.”

Robertson linked his criticisms of vaccine mandates to water fluoridation: “I just think that we’ve got to be careful that we fall for these nostrums, you know, you have to put fluoride in all of the water because it will cut down on cavities. But what does fluoride do to people? We don’t know some of the consequences, we don’t have all of the knowledge we need and we should be very careful not to force people to do stuff that they earnestly feel they shouldn’t do.”

Likening Obama’s plan to the Massachusetts furlough program that critics said was responsible for Horton’s crime spree, Boone said Obama might begin “emptying and shutting down all our prisons and just let all the offenders be released back into society.”

“He and his administration are already doing that – deporting criminal illegal aliens, and then allowing them to come right back in to commit more crimes,” Boone added, wondering if the Obama administration's policies will lead to “a mass invasion by illegal aliens, including near certain terrorists with plans for future 9/11 style attacks in our own cities?”

All of this, Boone said, is meant to turn America “into a virtual socialist, if not outright communist, society.”

What’s it going to take, America, for us collectively to wake up and see the obvious – that we’re being taken off the rails by a mad conductor?

This is the 50th anniversary of the film “Doctor Strangelove.” Ironic, if not prescient. This frighteningly successful film depicts a U.S. government and military buying into false information and launching a devastating atomic attack on Russia, in what is intended to be a first strike deterrent of a suspected attack, which proved early to be inaccurate. But in the end, all attempts to recall or stop the atomic attack failed, and the film ends with crazed Colonel “King” Kong straddling the bomb as it falls from the bomb bay and hurtles toward the catastrophic explosion and the pollution of the whole earth’s atmosphere.

There’s a different scenario unfolding in this country we love, right before our eyes, and we’re reading about it in the daily papers and seeing it on the nightly news broadcasts. What if our elected leadership had decided America no longer deserved to be leader of the free world, should have its military and its programs reduced to ineffectual status, our vibrant economy bankrupted, and that our republic should be “fundamentally transformed” into a virtual socialist, if not outright communist, society?

What if the elected president and his attorney general, both sworn to defend the Constitution and the security of the United States, decided – even made public statements – that they would not defend the laws concerning our borders and a mass invasion by illegal aliens, including near certain terrorists with plans for future 9/11 style attacks in our own cities?

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I’m not making this up, and it’s not a Stanley Kubrick screenplay. It’s the “man with the phone and pen” using his “executive authority” with abandon and disdain for Congress, the Constitution and his own oath to defend our country.

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Will he just sovereignly declare, like a 21st century “Doctor Strangelove,” that while he raises our national debt to over $18 trillion, we can “save money” by emptying and shutting down all our prisons and just let all the offenders be released back into society? He and his administration are already doing that – deporting criminal illegal aliens, and then allowing them to come right back in to commit more crimes. And so far, Congress seems befuddled about what to do.

PFAW activists joined with allies from Public Citizen, Open Democracy, and others last Thursday at public hearings on New Hampshire House and Senate bills calling for a constitutional amendment to overturn decisions like Citizens United.

About 50 supporters of a constitutional amendment attended each hearing, creating standing room only and overflow in the small room reserved for the House bill hearing.

Speakers included small business owners, activists who passed local town resolutions in favor of an amendment, and high school students. Not a single person testified in opposition to the proposed legislation, underscoring the deep support among Americans of all backgrounds for fixing our big money system.

The bills (HB 371 and SB 136) call for the state legislature to recommend a constitutional amendment to the state’s congressional delegation, as well as for public hearings in geographically diverse areas across the state to decide the exact language for such an amendment.

A committee in the New Hampshire House will vote on the bill in an executive session on Wednesday afternoon, while the appropriate Senate committee has not yet set a date for a vote. PFAW activists and allies will be back at the state capitol next week for a lobby day to meet with key representatives and senators on Wednesday, February 4th.

Interested in joining us? For more information and to RSVP, email Lindsay Jakows at ljjakows@gmail.com.

Iowa Republican National Committee member Tamara Scott, who also runs the state chapter of Concerned Women for America and works as a lobbyist for The Family Leader, told the “View From a Pew” radio program last week that more prayer rallies like Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s “The Response” are needed to prevent God from destroying America .

One of the things for which the country needs to repent in order to get back on God’s good side, Scott said later in the interview, is the end of state-sponsored prayer in schools.

“When the prayer came out in the ‘70s, and that’s one of the things that I prayed for last week in Louisiana with 6,000 people, repentance, because we as a church should never have let that happen, we should never have allowed prayer to be taken out of our schools,” she said.

She cited the claims of Christian-nation activist David Barton, who links the end of state-sponsored school prayer to all manner of social ills. “Since we’ve done that, David Barton has done studies and research that in your schools, the crimes used to be gum, tardiness and talking. Now it is assault, rape, murder. We’re dealing with much more difficult issues,” she said.

Scott suggested that instead of passing a “horrible” anti-bullying bill currently being considered in the state legislature, Iowa should just return Christian prayer to schools:

“The problem is, like prayer, we took out the golden rule in our schools — which is a scripture verse, treat others like you want to be yourself treated — we’ve taken the Bible out and the schools are groping for something to replace it, and in its place with all kinds of bad law on top of bad law that only oppress us and make us all victims to possible crime and punishment for somebody else’s cause.”

Later in the interview, Scott insisted that the separation of church and state is “nowhere” in the Constitution and that if conservative Christians “only had the courage of the pagans or those who disagree with us, if we stood on our convictions as much as they do, we wouldn’t be in this.”